The greatest athlete in the world?

A gentlemen by the name of Todd Hargrove is writing a series asking this question on his website bettermovement.org

Part 1: http://www.bettermovement.org/2012/who- ... the-world/

Part 2: http://www.bettermovement.org/2012/the- ... -part-two/

Here's my take.

Firstly, I think we can all admit there is no ultimate objective answer and so in the end these discussion are just for fun.

I agree with the author that we should look at strength, speed, stamina, and skill. My bias is also to put the most weight on skill.

Someone like Usain Bolt gets eliminated because he as no stamina and low skill (sprinting is a low skill sport - it's simplistic and mostly innate).

What about gymnasts? Certainly a good contender. However, I would eliminate them because their skills are displayed in a prefabricated routine. It is a more impressive skill, to me, to have to execute a skill in the moment in an environment of uncertainty.

This means the best athlete will come from a sport where there are opponents you must react against in the moment.

The sport which has the best overall mix of strength, speed, stamina, and skill (including the type of "in the moment" skill I described above) is either MMA or BJJ.

MMA and BJJ have strength, speed, stamina, and the skill is the most impressive because they probably have more distinct techniques than any other sport and they are required to use these techniques in an environment of uncertainty.

Actually, gi-BJJ probably has more techniques than MMA. In addition, every technique has multiple layers of complexity.

Therefore, gi-BJJ is the overall most athletic sport in the world. The current champion of gi-BJJ is Marcus “Buchecha†Almeida. He is the world's greatest athlete.

-7DLFqLCFqg

RatioFitness said:

(...) Someone like Usain Bolt gets eliminated because he as no stamina and low skill (sprinting is a low skill sport - it's simplistic and mostly innate)

(...)

Therefore, gi-BJJ is the overall most athletic sport in the world. The current champion of gi-BJJ is Marcus “Buchecha†Almeida. He is the world's greatest athlete

ROFL!

You tell me how Almeida will catch Bolt!

FredInChina said:

RatioFitness said:

(...) Someone like Usain Bolt gets eliminated because he as no stamina and low skill (sprinting is a low skill sport - it's simplistic and mostly innate)

(...)

Therefore, gi-BJJ is the overall most athletic sport in the world. The current champion of gi-BJJ is Marcus “Buchecha†Almeida. He is the world's greatest athlete

ROFL!

You tell me how Almeida will catch Bolt!

He can't. But why is Usain running away? Is he afraid?

Lol!

As a semi-serious answer, I'd say the following, in no particular order:

Bo Jackson

Jim Thorpe (If you want a natural born athlete who just was what he was, no physical training, he's a pretty powerful contender... check out The Jim Thorpe Story)

Damian Walters (if you want power, precision, hand-eye coordination, blah blah then he's got an incredible blend)

Every multi-talented Cirque performer? Yuri?

Well, umm, I would probably say Adam Malysz, the greatest modern ski jumper, but only because I've been a big fan of him since 2000, and he has been a huge role model for me and effectively has changed my life. But since this is only a question of the greatest, not my favourite, I think, sadly, most ski jumpers have to be ruled off. Pity, considering how great the sport is, my I can't find any support for the claim that they're the most athletics guys out there

I'd like to bring out Jacko Gill. His overall explosiveness is much greater than anyone I have seen, and he's on his way to revolutionize the whole port of shot put. Can't wait to see him develop more

RatioFitness said:

FredInChina said:

RatioFitness said:

(...) Someone like Usain Bolt gets eliminated because he as no stamina and low skill (sprinting is a low skill sport - it's simplistic and mostly innate)

(...)

Therefore, gi-BJJ is the overall most athletic sport in the world. The current champion of gi-BJJ is Marcus “Buchecha†Almeida. He is the world's greatest athlete

ROFL!

You tell me how Almeida will catch Bolt!

He can't. But why is Usain running away? Is he afraid?

He is planning hit and run methods.

Joshua Naterman said:

Lol!

As a semi-serious answer, I'd say the following, in no particular order:

Bo Jackson

Jim Thorpe (If you want a natural born athlete who just was what he was, no physical training, he's a pretty powerful contender... check out The Jim Thorpe Story)

Damian Walters (if you want power, precision, hand-eye coordination, blah blah then he's got an incredible blend)

Every multi-talented Cirque performer? Yuri?

All great athletes for sure.

Bo Jackson's skill set was probably too few. He was good at batting (hand eyes coordination) and running a football which requires cutting and field sense.

Jim Thorpe I'll eliminate because it's easier to be a multi-sport athlete in those days.

Damian Walters and cirque performers I eliminate for the same reason I eliminate gymnasts, above.

Uzeeh said:

Well, umm, I would probably say Adam Malysz, the greatest modern ski jumper, but only because I've been a big fan of him since 2000, and he has been a huge role model for me and effectively has changed my life. But since this is only a question of the greatest, not my favourite, I think, sadly, most ski jumpers have to be ruled off. Pity, considering how great the sport is, my I can't find any support for the claim that they're the most athletics guys out there

I'd like to bring out Jacko Gill. His overall explosiveness is much greater than anyone I have seen, and he's on his way to revolutionize the whole port of shot put. Can't wait to see him develop more

I don't know anything about him, but I'd eliminate him because he only has one technique to get good at.

RatioFitness said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Lol!

As a semi-serious answer, I'd say the following, in no particular order:

Bo Jackson

Jim Thorpe (If you want a natural born athlete who just was what he was, no physical training, he's a pretty powerful contender... check out The Jim Thorpe Story)

Damian Walters (if you want power, precision, hand-eye coordination, blah blah then he's got an incredible blend)

Every multi-talented Cirque performer? Yuri?

All great athletes for sure.

Bo Jackson's skill set was probably too few. He was good at batting (hand eyes coordination) and running a football which requires cutting and field sense.

Jim Thorpe I'll eliminate because it's easier to be a multi-sport athlete in those days.

Damian Walters and cirque performers I eliminate for the same reason I eliminate gymnasts, above.

You are out of your mind. How do you propose to take a sport like BJJ where all you do is grab onto clothes, roll around, and pull joints in directions they were not designed to go and elevate it above a combination of the (to this day) greatest Decathlon performance, football, a 10 second flat 100m, all done back in the early 1900's?

It's ridiculous to think that. BJJ is a very specialized skill set, and while MMA requires a wider variety it is still just BJJ plus hand-eye coordination on your feet and ring awareness. Perhaps you haven't played football, or competed in all Decathlon events, but every sport requires fine control when you intend to play at the highest level.

At the very least, Thorpe should be on an even footing with the rest but in truth he is one of the greatest athletes in history.

I say the soldier that ran the first marathon, Pheidippides, fight a battle and then run around a mountain. . . total stud I do admit its a legend and has not been proven as historical fact and there are contradicting accounts but still http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#Origin Its a wiki but gives a decent run down.

Sports especially today are so specialized that greatest is really relative to what you're talking about. If you consider individual sport domination then look into John Brzenk. Not what many would consider an athlete but clearly one of the best at his chosen skill.

Vaulters.

Yes, sprint is very technical.

Joshua Naterman said:

(...) a combination of the (to this day) greatest Decathlon performance, (...) (...)

Ahhh, now we are talking; good decathletes are absolute beasts!

We'd need to find one that can hold his own in the water and on other planes than flat surfaces (mountain climbing, etc...), but you are on to something here Joshua.

rhyneza said:

Wasn’t it Poliquin that cited a study of Pole Vaulters being the best athletes since they performed all sports better. (Which is funny since I believe many Pole Vaulters start out with a gymnastics background.)

The Virginia Tech pole vaulting team came in and trained at the gymnastics gym 2-3 times a week. They all saw increases in their jump heights after training with us.

Joshua Naterman said:

You are out of your mind. How do you propose to take a sport like BJJ where all you do is grab onto clothes, roll around, and pull joints in directions they were not designed to go and elevate it above a combination of the (to this day) greatest Decathlon performance, football, a 10 second flat 100m, all done back in the early 1900's?

It's ridiculous to think that. BJJ is a very specialized skill set, and while MMA requires a wider variety it is still just BJJ plus hand-eye coordination on your feet and ring awareness. Perhaps you haven't played football, or competed in all Decathlon events, but every sport requires fine control when you intend to play at the highest level.

At the very least, Thorpe should be on an even footing with the rest but in truth he is one of the greatest athletes in history.

Whoa, there. This discussion is just for fun. No need to question my sanity, just yet.

One problem I have with giving the nod to a decathlete, is that half the events are running/jumping, which is a basic skill inherent in all people. Yes, there is technique in running/jumping, but I have no doubt we can both agree it is pretty low on the ladder of movement complexity. Further, decathletes don't need much/any "in the moment" skills - the ability to change what they are doing and switch to something else.

I played a lot of football in recess and P.E.. A good running back displays great virtuosity due to their "field sense" but the running and cutting are low in movement complexity I can't give them super high marks.

Nic Branson said:

Sports especially today are so specialized that greatest is really relative to what you're talking about. If you consider individual sport domination then look into John Brzenk. Not what many would consider an athlete but clearly one of the best at his chosen skill.

"Pulling John" is a great documentary.

I certainly consider him to be an athlete, but his movement pool and complexity is too limited to be a contender for best athlete.

I don't consider dominance in your sport to be that important for what we are talking about, except maybe as a tie breaker.

Is just my thoughts. I don't really get involved in debates such as this as I don't really care for the topic. When I think of all around ability with both mental and physical toughness I look at the elite special operatives.

rhyneza said:

This is great! Who doesn’t love this discussion!

Usain Bolt has no stamina? Bo Knows Stamina and so does Usain. Anaerobic endurance trains aerobic endurance. Usian Bolt like most high level athletes have a tremendous amount of daily training volume and are highly conditioned . Take a look at just one day of training for Pocket Hercules (Niam): never doing more than 2 reps in a set and lifting near maximally intensity has a total tonnage volume of 32,836 pounds in one day! Stamina? Yes, world class stamina! But yet Niam’s competitive lifts take far less time than Usian Bolt 100 meter. And both take a lot less time than “endurance†events yet their stamina is every bit as elite.

Work capacity isn't the same thing as stamina.

And for sprinting being “low†skill, I would re-word that to “basic†skill. And yet this basic skill is one of the very best indicators of athletic potential and ability. Its value to “athletic expression†cannot be overestimated.

I agree, "basic" is a better term! One can display great virtuosity in these basic movements, but the fact of the matter is that the movement complexity is still very low. The movement complexity of sprinting is far cry from a gymnastics vault routine.

And many, many sport Coaches (and research) would go on to say that the sprint, vertical jump, and long jump, are the best indicators of athletic potential. And yet they are among the most rudimental movements. (It always goes back to the basics!)

That's fine, but if you never develop skills more complex than these basic movements I'm still not going to give you the nod as best athlete. Potential must be actualized to get the nod from me!

And as far as gymnastics goes with “prefabricated†routines? Take an obstacle course that a has not been seen before and see who completes it best – the BJJ or the gymnast. Gymnast have some of the most uncanny ability if not the highest ability to deal with uncertainty in environments.

How do you know that?

I would also suggest taking a BJJ and train them in gymnastics and see if they get better at BJJ and then take a gymnast and train them in BJJ and see if they get any better at gymnastics.

What would this test prove?

Good response! It really made me think!!!

Work capacity, stamina.

RF, your argument in the OP is fundamentally flawed as you're using only a selection of the sport's attributes as arguments, not the actual skills of the athletes themselves. "Gymnastics is ruled out because the movements are carried out in a pre-fabricated routine". That does not imply that gymnasts aren't able to produce strong movements outside the context of a routine.

Same with sprinting. Maybe it is low-skill, but sprinters have excellent power production, which is a good indicator of atlethic ability.

...but I don't really care about who is the best. Just that arguments are logical.

The final part is up: www.bettermovement.org/2012/the-worlds- ... art-three/

The winner is (according to the author)..........

3du94AXBDEY

Thoughts?

RatioFitness said:

Joshua Naterman said:

You are out of your mind. How do you propose to take a sport like BJJ where all you do is grab onto clothes, roll around, and pull joints in directions they were not designed to go and elevate it above a combination of the (to this day) greatest Decathlon performance, football, a 10 second flat 100m, all done back in the early 1900's?

It's ridiculous to think that. BJJ is a very specialized skill set, and while MMA requires a wider variety it is still just BJJ plus hand-eye coordination on your feet and ring awareness. Perhaps you haven't played football, or competed in all Decathlon events, but every sport requires fine control when you intend to play at the highest level.

At the very least, Thorpe should be on an even footing with the rest but in truth he is one of the greatest athletes in history.

Whoa, there. This discussion is just for fun. No need to question my sanity, just yet.

One problem I have with giving the nod to a decathlete, is that half the events are running/jumping, which is a basic skill inherent in all people. Yes, there is technique in running/jumping, but I have no doubt we can both agree it is pretty low on the ladder of movement complexity. Further, decathletes don't need much/any "in the moment" skills - the ability to change what they are doing and switch to something else.

I played a lot of football in recess and P.E.. A good running back displays great virtuosity due to their "field sense" but the running and cutting are low in movement complexity I can't give them super high marks.

Man, I forget one little smiley and everyone takes me seriously. What kind of bar room debate doesn't have people saying the others are out of their minds?

I don't even know where to start with this post, I mean there is a lot more to the running and jumping, especially the combined run/jump events, that are extremely high up on the complexity list. Explain how pole vaulting is any less complex than a butterfly sweep or a triple threat. I think that if you had more experience with track and field, not that I have a WEALTH, but I have tried most everything and really only excelled at discus (but didn't stick with it... too interested in video games at the time) you would have a whole new respect for the complexity.

Same goes for hurdles. Same goes for high jump. Discus. Shot put (especially spin technique). Even Javelin requires quite a bit of fine control. The pure running events are certainly lower on the list, but there's a lot more technique and motor coordination than you apparently think.

I mean really... rolling around grabbing at each other's clothes is a skill inherent in everyone who wants to reproduce, and everyone who has ever gotten into a fight, so I don't see how that somehow became such a high and mighty distinctively complex skill. Sure, there's a big difference between a BJJ match and two guys in a bar, but the basic skill is there : Grab them, make something move the wrong way. I don't know one person who isn't a quadriplegic that can't do that.

As far as in the moment skills go, the ability to run a route, adjust for people in your way, stay just inside the sideline while looking backwards (at full speed), jumping up, catching a ball that is both moving quickly through the air and spinning, often while turning around backwards in the air, and then landing on your feet if you're lucky and continuing to run at full speed is highly, highly complex AND requires enormous in-the-moment changing of skills. Any kind of pro-level receiver is a highly, highly skilled athlete by any measure.

A good running back in PE? Dude! DUDE! DUUUUUDE. We're talking about professional athletes. You know, the ones who change direction, bounce off of people, have to be planning a route down the field while avoiding getting smashed, slip through small gaps between players, jump over two rows of players at times, anticipate the movements of the entire down-field defense,and so on. And that's just a good professional running back. The receivers are even more skilled.

Many of those track and field events also have multiple phases where you are doing very different things, so what's the justification for saying they don't show "in the moment" skill? I will agree that this is, by and large, not a factor in the straight runs, but all the other events require a rapid succession of very different movements.

Competitive sport.

Rik de Kort said:

RF, your argument in the OP is fundamentally flawed as you're using only a selection of the sport's attributes as arguments, not the actual skills of the athletes themselves. "Gymnastics is ruled out because the movements are carried out in a pre-fabricated routine". That does not imply that gymnasts aren't able to produce strong movements outside the context of a routine.

Same with sprinting. Maybe it is low-skill, but sprinters have excellent power production, which is a good indicator of atlethic ability.

...but I don't really care about who is the best. Just that arguments are logical.

Lol, it's also complete nonsense. All athletes practice the combinations of skills that they use, many times and often in many combinations.

If that's the argument, BJJ is off the radar. Every single person here who practices BJJ knows that you drill your triple attacks over and over and over. You practice moving from one move to the next to the next. You develop sequences that are practiced so many times that you don't even have to think, it happens automatically and allows you to plan strategically and pre-fabricate your next 8-10 moves. That's what makes a black belt a black belt, that automation.

Besides, even when you practice these things you are doing an incredible number of movements in rapid succession.

The only honest measure of athleticism is the capability of the body, not what it is asked to do in competition. That is a measure of sport-specific skill, and is not enough of an indicator.

Motor problems are movement, and cognitive problems are dealing with competitors. From a pure motor standpoint, gymnasts will win. Soccer is probably a good top tier sport for the cognitive aspect of this, but I think that the presentation of moving through a field full of players as being different than a parkour runner moving through a field of obstacles is nonsense. You can't get a good sense of what you need to do until you get right there at the next obstacle. Everything is in the moment. You don't always think, you just get to the next one and do SOMETHING that gets you past it quickly. That's the essence of parkour and is what separates it from free-running, though in both sports/disciplines/arts/whatevers they are going to have to deal with variations in the ground, the way they grip, the way they land, all kinds of things in the moment. Obstacles often look different from far away. Still, I think that soccer probably requires the most attention and cognitive skill. As for the motor coordination, I don't think it's higher than a tumbling run or a pole vault or a receiver making a difficult catch, but it is certainly a more unique experience each time than the first two. Not sure how I feel about that part... tough to really be accurate.

Man... I need a pitcher!

Bo Knows Stamina

You made my day, Rhyneza! I miss Bo Jackson commercials!